Helldivers 2 Medal Farm: Every Source and What It Pays

A good Helldivers 2 medal farm stacks four sources: full operations at the highest difficulty you can reliably finish (per-operation pay rises with difficulty, up to 36 on Super Helldive), the daily Personal Order for 15, Major Orders for 35–100 on success, and 1–3 medal cases at minor points of interest. Spend before the 250 cap, because extra medals are discarded.

Medals are the only currency that unlocks items inside Warbonds, and you can never hold more than 250 of them. So a good medal farm is really two habits: earning from every source available to you, and spending often enough that nothing is thrown away. This guide covers both.

Where Helldivers 2 medals come from

Arrowhead’s support page on currencies says medals “can be discovered through gameplay or awarded for completing objectives”. The community-run Helldivers Wiki medal page breaks that into four sources:

• Missions: 1 to 15 medals per completed mission, depending on the difficulty you pick.
• Medal cases: 1 to 3 medals from cases found at minor points of interest, inside pods, cargo containers and bunkers.
• Personal Orders: 15 medals for each one you complete.
• Major Orders: 35 to 100 medals when the community completes one.

Arrowhead’s Warbond FAQ, quoted on the wiki, also confirms you “will always earn medals” whether you have Warbonds left to finish or not. What stops you from earning is the cap, covered further down.

Medals per operation at every difficulty

Mission medals are the biggest steady source, and the payout is fixed by difficulty and by the mission’s place in the operation. The wiki transcribes it from the in-game reward screens; Arrowhead does not publish it as a chart.

Two things stand out. The jump from difficulty 4 to 5 more than doubles the operation total, from 8 to 18, because operations grow from two missions to three. And the biggest payouts sit at the end: on Super Helldive the third mission alone is worth 15 of the 36. In-game text says failing one mission fails the rest of the operation, so an operation you can finish beats one you can only survive for a while.

How to farm medals in Helldivers 2: what to do first

Nobody publishes a verified medals-per-hour figure, and mission length depends on your squad, so treat any hourly number you see elsewhere as an estimate. What the sources do support is an order of priorities:

1. Stay under the cap. If you are near 250, spend first. Every medal past the cap is lost, which makes this the one mistake that wastes a whole session.
2. Do the Personal Order every day. It rotates every 24 hours and pays a flat 15 medals, no matter what difficulty you play.
3. Play toward the Major Order. It pays 35 to 100 medals to everyone if the community succeeds, and nothing if it fails.
4. Run full operations at the highest difficulty you reliably finish. Higher difficulties pay more medals per operation, and this is the only source you control completely. Harder operations can also take longer, so that is more medals per operation, not a proven higher rate per hour.
5. Loot minor points of interest on the way. Medal cases are small, but they are free medals for the whole squad.

Short missions versus full maps

The wiki lists different time limits by mission type: 15 minutes for Eradicate missions, 12 minutes for Blitz: Search and Destroy, and 40 minutes for a standard objective such as Terminate Illegal Broadcast. A time limit is a ceiling, not how long the mission takes, but it shows why short mission types are popular for medal runs.

There is a trade-off. The wiki’s medal table is set by difficulty and mission slot, not by mission type, so a short mission pays the same mission medals. But the wiki describes minor points of interest as a feature of Expedition-type maps, so an Eradicate map is not where you pick up medal cases. Blitz: Search and Destroy is the wiki’s noted exception, where minor points of interest can spawn.

Medals PackMedals are the only currency that unlocks Warbond items, and your account holds at most 250 at a time.From $5.99View offer

Medal cases: loose medals at points of interest

Medal cases are the one source you can farm without finishing anything. The wiki says each case holds 1 to 3 medals, which are “instantly added to every present Helldiver’s account upon pickup”, and mission completion is not required. In a full squad, one person opening a case pays all four players.

Cases sit in the special loot slots of minor points of interest. According to the wiki’s minor places of interest page, a pod has room for one special item, a cargo container for two and a bunker for three. That slot can also hold a support weapon, Super Credits, Requisition Slips or a Rare Sample, so a case is never guaranteed.

A few details from the same page make these faster to clear:

• Bunkers need two players. Two Helldivers have to press the unlock buttons at the same time.
• Cargo containers need an explosion. Anything with enough demolition force opens them, including the G-6 Frag and G-12 High Explosive grenades, the R-36 Eruptor and a stomp from any Exosuit.
• The Radar Station side objective highlights every point of interest on the map, and the compass shows a question mark within 60 metres of an undiscovered one.

One counterintuitive note from the medal page: special loot containers with medals are more likely on difficulties 1 to 3, because on those levels their spawns are not taken up by Rare Samples. Low difficulty pays badly per mission, but it is not a bad place to hunt cases.

Personal Orders and Major Orders

Personal Orders: 15 medals a day

The wiki’s Personal Orders page describes them as optional orders for each player that rotate every 24 hours and pay 15 medals. They expire when the timer runs out, but still count if you started the mission before the reset. Typical examples include extracting from three successful missions, completing six optional objectives, or killing a set number of a specific enemy.

Squadmates’ kills count toward your order too, so you can pick up a Personal Order in a group. Some orders are tied to a faction or a minimum difficulty, though. Killing two Bile Titans, for instance, needs a Terminid planet at difficulty 5 or higher.

Major Orders: the biggest single payouts

Major Orders are community-wide objectives. The Major Orders page is clear that if the order fails before its deadline, no rewards are given. The September 2026 record shows how that plays out:

The two failed orders paid nothing, so the three that succeeded were worth 105 medals in total between September 1 and 21. Contributing to the order is how you help it succeed. It is also a good reason to be under the cap when an order is about to finish.

The Helldivers 2 medal cap: 250

The wiki states that “the maximum number of medals any Helldiver can have is 250” and that anything earned beyond it is discarded. Arrowhead’s patch 01.000.400 notes added the cap to the game’s interface, so you can see it in-game.

In practice, seven Super Helldive operations take you from zero past the cap. A 50-medal Major Order landing while you sit at 220 gives you 30. If you are saving for a specific item, park the medals in a Warbond you will finish anyway rather than letting them overflow.

What to spend medals on: Warbonds

Arrowhead’s What is a Warbond page explains the structure. Each Warbond has several pages, and spending a set number of medals opens the next one. All medals spent in that Warbond count toward the next page, whichever page you spent them on.

The free Helldivers Mobilize Warbond is where every new player’s medals go first. The wiki’s Helldivers Mobilize page lists 10 pages, 1,200 medals spent to open them all and 2,015 medals to unlock everything. That is more than eight full caps. It also holds 750 Super Credits you claim with medals, which is where medal farming and Super Credit farming overlap.

Premium Warbonds cost 1,000 Super Credits to unlock before medals can be spent in them, per Arrowhead, and Legendary Warbonds are priced differently. The wiki records that as of September 18, 2026 it takes 18,522 medals to max out every Warbond. For the item list and page costs of a recent one, see the Ironclad Democracy Warbond guide.

Pushing difficulty for medals has a side benefit: Super Samples only start appearing on difficulty 6. If ship modules are next on your list, our guide to finding Super Samples covers where they spawn.

Helldivers 2 medal and resource packs

At 36 medals per Super Helldive operation, 18,522 medals is more than 500 finished operations. If you would rather spend that time using the gear, these are the Helldivers 2 items we carry for it.

Medals PackMedals for Warbond items. Keep the 250 cap in mind and spend before topping up.From $5.99View offer Resource BundlesMedals together with Requisition Slips and Samples, for Warbonds and ship upgrades at once.From $7.79View offer

Frequently asked questions

What is the fastest way to get medals in Helldivers 2?

No one publishes a verified medals-per-hour figure, so no single method is proven fastest. What adds up is the daily Personal Order (15), Major Orders (35 to 100 on success), and full operations at the highest difficulty you can reliably finish, since per-operation pay rises with difficulty, up to 36 on Super Helldive. Open medal cases along the way.

Is there a medal cap in Helldivers 2?

Yes, 250. Anything you earn past it is discarded, so spend medals before a big operation or a Major Order payout.

Do medal cases count if the mission fails?

Yes. The wiki says case medals are added to every Helldiver present when someone picks the case up, and mission completion is not required.

Do you get medals if a Major Order fails?

No. Major Order rewards are only given when the order is completed before its deadline.

Can you earn medals without a Warbond to spend them on?

Yes. Arrowhead’s Warbond FAQ says you always earn medals, whether your Warbonds are unfinished, finished or not bought. You still cannot hold more than 250.

Do short missions like Eradicate give fewer medals?

The wiki’s medal table depends on difficulty and mission slot, not mission type. The wiki describes minor points of interest, where medal cases sit, as an Expedition-map feature, so Eradicate runs are not a source of cases.

Sources and update history

• Arrowhead Game Studios support: What type of currencies are in the game? — how medals are earned and what they are for; updated September 7, 2026
• Arrowhead Game Studios support: What is a Warbond? — page structure, Premium Warbonds at 1,000 Super Credits; updated August 26, 2025
• Arrowhead Game Studios: Patch 01.000.400 — medal cap shown in the UI; June 13, 2024
• Helldivers Wiki: Medal — sources, medals by difficulty, 250 cap, medal cases on difficulties 1 to 3, 18,522 total as of September 18, 2026
• Helldivers Wiki: Minor Places of Interest — special loot slots, bunkers, cargo containers, Radar Station
• Helldivers Wiki: Personal Orders — 24-hour rotation, 15 medals, example orders
• Helldivers Wiki: Major Orders — failure rule, September 2026 orders and rewards
• Helldivers Wiki: Warbonds — Arrowhead’s Warbond FAQ as quoted from the official Discord
• Helldivers Wiki: Helldivers Mobilize Warbond — 1,200 and 2,015 medal totals, 750 Super Credits
• Helldivers Wiki mission pages: Eradicate Terminid Swarm, Blitz: Search and Destroy, Terminate Illegal Broadcast — time limits
• HELLDIVERS 2 on Steam — official screenshot used as the cover

Update history: Published September 22, 2026. Facts last checked September 22, 2026 against the sources above.